Abstract
General anesthetics are indispensable for modern medicine, but detailed understanding of their mechanism of action is lacking. Even today, the relationship between the transport dynamics of anesthetic drugs and the resultant neurophysiological activity is poorly understood. Two fundamental models for pharmacokinetics at the tissue level based on the exchange speed of anesthetics between the blood vessel and tissue have been discussed: diffusion-limited model and flow-limited model. Generally, the clinical pharmacokinetic model at an organ level assumes blood flow-limited transport in tissues. This assumption has worked for small lipophilic organic solvents such as inhaled anesthetics. However, the method to distinguish the conditions under which either of the two models is appropriate has rarely been evaluated. Passive diffusion through the lipid bilayer membranes and other lipophilic structures may also play an important role in local drug transport at the cellular level. Although the diffusion coefficient of anesthetics is a fundamental parameter that characterizes the spatiotemporal kinetics, many previous studies have relied on empirical or theoretical values estimated from the molecular size.
© 2017 IEEE
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